On Friday 24th April Eurostat published the EU Ecosystem Accounts Handbook compiled by a team led by VITO, with e-counting, IDEEA group and eftec, and with advice from a Taskforce of Member State statisticians. 

The EU Ecosystem Accounts Handbook provides practical guidance for compilers of ecosystem accounts as part of Member States’ national statistics, building on existing EU statistics to operationalize the UN SEEA Ecosystem Accounting standard (2021) in an EU context. 

The handbook covers ecosystem extent and condition accounts, and supply and use accounts for seven ecosystem services in physical terms, as required under Amendment to the EU regulation on environmental accounts (No 691/2011). 
The regulation requires Member States to report annually, with a first submission cycle in 2026. 
By laying out approaches for measuring supply and use of ecosystem services, the handbook helps form the basis for applying monetary valuation methods in ecosystem accounts.